Activist Sunanda Patwardhan was in her office in interior Jawhar district, one morning last year, when a local Warli woman angrily demanded to see her. She had just returned from Mumbai and what she had witnessed left her incensed.

As many as 3,285 inaccessible villages have been electrified in various States across the country under Decentralized Distributed Generation Scheme, minister Piyush Goyal said.

Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines, Piyush Goyal, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Monday informed that as per information provided by the States, 13,872 un-electrified census villages have been reported to be electrified up to 30th June, 2017, out of 18,452 un-electrified villages in the country as on 1st April, 2015.

Recently, Union Minister of Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley clearly emphasised his Government’s focus, which he said included two important areas including building infrastructure on war footing and substantial expenditure on development of rural India, where he mentioned that every village in India is electrified by 2018.

The government on Thursday crossed another important benchmark when it crossed the 13,000 mark in its attempts to electrify villages in rural India. With 13,002 out of 18,452 villages electrified as on March 30, 2017, the promise to provide ‘Power To All” seems a close reality now.

According to official figures, nearly one third of villages are left (5665) of the total 18452 villages. Time left is nearly 460 days. So 2/3rd of the villages remains to be electrified in nearly 460 days.

The pace of rural electrification in India continued unabated and out of a total of 18452 villages, as on February 6, 2017, as many as 12,033 villages have been electrified and 5,665 remains to be electrified.

The remaining villages (3968- 70%) are now mainly in 4 states including Arunachal Pradesh (1229); Assam (972); Jharkhand (892) and Odisha (875)).

In line with its transparent style of functioning, the ministry of power’s GARV App has made it possible for anyone to check the state by state status of the village electrification process in India. Available data shows that out of a total of 18452 villages, as on February 6, 2017, more than 12,000 villages have been electrified and 5,665 remains to be electrified.

Lack of correct information on the roles of the Centre and States on supply of electricity to households is creating a lot of confusion amongst the people of the country on the issue of large scale village electrification.

For a common man, it is easy to get carried away when baseless information is presented in convincing manners through established mediums. Moreover, as the assembly elections approach, the issue of village electrification has become the spear of political propaganda against the ruling BJP government at the Centre, with desperate efforts to malign and misrepresent the steps being taken in the direction of village electrification.

Another 28 villages of India have been electrified in the week from 15th to 21st August 2016 under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna (DDUGJY). Out of these electrified villages, 4 villages belong to Assam, 5 Chhattisgarh, 3 to Jharkhand, 10 to Meghalaya and 6 to Rajasthan.